only treaty between this people and the Christians that was not ratified by an oath, and that was never broken." It was made under a spreading ehn-tree, which the contending nations in the American war concurred to honour and protect, and which, when recently blown down, was wrought, by the devotion of the neighbourhood, into cups and other memorials.-Would that, ere it perished, its seeds had been scattered over the face of the world. Civilized nations owe large arrears of honesty and benevolence to the unenlightened people they have conquered. It is no small honour to our own age, that at length the "groans of Afric” have been heard; and that the endless millions of India may hope to see the day star of religion arise upon their cloudy plains.

We have, after this, an interesting description of the country and people from the hand of Penn himself, and an account of the rapid proceedings of the new government, as yet undisturbed by faction or self-interest. "Two general assemblies, (says he,) have been held, and with such concord and dispatch, that they sat but three weeks, and passed seventy laws." In what degree this concord might have endured had he continued in America it is impossible to say. Upon hearing that the persecution of his sect continued in England, he determined to quit his province and return thither. On this we shall have some comments to offer in conclusion. Soon after his arrival in England, in 1695, Charles II. died, and James, to whom his father, the admiral, had commended him on his dying bed, ascended the throne. It is one of the most honourable features in the history of this unfortunate sovereign that he fulfilled this pledge to his old friend; and that he had sense to discern the value of such a counsellor as William Penn. One circumstance cannot fail to surprise the reader,that Penn attributes the liberal conduct of James towards dissenters, not to the cause to which it is universally ascribed, his desire of including popery in the general toleration, but to his simple and abstract love of toleration itself. It is delightful at all times to see a fellow-creature rescued from .calumny; and, certainly, if James was not a bigot and a tyrant, he was "the most injured soul alive." But we find no evidence, even in the charitable statements of W. Penn and his biographer, for the exculpation of James. Indeed, the vindication seems to us chiefly to arise from the complacent feelings with which a man regards benefits conferred upon himself. Gifts are not to be scrutinized; and, where a king is the donor, reverence for the man quickens gratitude, and disarms suspicion. At all events, W. Penn was not the man to decide unkindly

4

in a doubtful cause. Open himself, he naturally adjudged the .apparent to be the real motive of others.

But we must here arrest our analysis-fearing lest, as streamis take the tincture of the soil through which they flow, something of the tediousness charged upon quakerism should be imputable to us. The remaining parts of the work are less interesting. They are chiefly occupied, during the reign of James, with the history of Penn's pamphlets-with, the never ending still beginning" squabbles of his American province and with his benevolent and rational interference with James for the interests of individuals and the general safety of religion. In the reign of William the scene changes. Pennsylvania, indeed, continues to squabble.-W. Penn himself also continues to scribble and preach as before. But his good fame and court interest were in the coffin there with Cæsar." "Another king arose who knew not" our "Joseph." And, as far as we can find, these days of tolerance brought none to him. The apostles of freedom put him in jail; and the Bill of Rights signed the death warrant of his privileges as a citizen and a man. He was repeatedly apprehended, examined, imprisoned, and discharged for want of an accuser; was deprived of his government by one summary decision of the privy council, and restored by another. In short, he, who in the last reign had been a freeman among slaves, became, in this reign, a slave among freemen: and he is one of the very few who could be suspected of selfish motives in designing the restoration of the Stewarts.

In 1709 the cloud of calamities which had so long hung over his destiny, and whose heavy drops had occasionally descended upon him, gathered new blackness, and, at length, burst over him. He was unsuccessful in a chancery suit-whereby both his purse and his honour were materially injured-was cheated by his province of the quit rents which, as proprietary, he had retained to himself was reduced to poverty-was compelled to mortgage his territory in a short period suffered three successive strokes of apoplexy, and was reduced, as to all matters of business, almost to a state of second childhood. From 1713 to 1718 inclusive, he gradually sunk under the burthen of inward disease and outward calamity. Scarcely any vestige of the original man, with the exception of a sort of mild benevolence, survived even during this period; and in 1718, at his seat of Rushcomb, in the 74th year of his age, he exchanged this turbulent state of things, we doubt not, for that calm and holy state, that unclouded sky and unruffled serenity for which, his, patient spirit had long quietly waited. There is something deeply interesting in the history of his last years. Every power but those which main

tained his intercourse with Heaven appears to have been suspended. He was translated from earth before he ascended to heaven. The chariot of the prophet stopped, as it were, in "mid air" to refine him, in a sort of intermediate sphere, for the realms of glory, Swift is said, when early in life he saw an oak strong in the stem, but withered at the head, to have pointed to it prophetically, as indicative of the last period of his own life. William Penn might have pointed to the same emblem, except that on his tree would have been seen one branch pointing heavenward, and carrying even here the fruit "which endureth unto everlasting life."

Having thus endeavoured to present our readers with a brief sketch of the life of William Penn, we shall follow the order prescribed by Mr. Clarkson, in offering some observations upon him,' first, as a private, and secondly, as a public character.

As to his private character, we are much disposed to acquiesce in the highly favourable representation of his biographer. He was evidently a pious, benevolent, disinterested, zealous, indefatigable man. In general also he displayed considerable patience and meekness; although these qualities were sometimes forgotten in his polemical writings, as the bare titles of them sufficiently prove. But he wrote in an age when it was the fashion to speak plainly-as Melancthon says, "dicere scapham, scapham-when the controversialists fought rather with the hatchet than the poniard-when instead, like the eastern bat, of drawing the blood without awakening the sleeper, they pounced, like kites, upon the prey, mangling even where they could not kill. He had, besides, a preposterous system to defend; and men are generally most violent upon the wrong side. -The scurrility and insolence of his adversaries provoked this coarse method of defence-quakerism has always been treated by the orthodox, not merely as an object of assault, but of ridicule a mode of attack least calculated to improve the temper of the besieged.

The talents of William Penn were certainly considerable. He was a pithy writer, an acute reasoner, whether in defence of truth or error. There is a simplicity in his style, and a sort of transparent sincerity in his manner, calculated to convey a strong feeling of the honesty of the argument. He has also the art of seizing the popular parts of a subject—and of adroitly touching that which is best suited to the persons for whom he writes. He has, moreover, one striking characteristic of an elevated mind; that of taking a topic from the ground of party, and placing on it -the broad foundation of reason and human nature.

In considering his private character, it is impossible to pass over his religion. He was a quaker. But let not any one understand by the application of this title to him, that he embraced all the absurdities which have taken refuge under this name. He was not one of those who rode naked into towns, or proclaimed themselves to be saviours of the world. Fox had done something for quakerism, and Keith, Barclay, and Penn, did more. Except that now and then his company or his zeal betrayed him into extravagancies, Penn's creed, perhaps, would have been accurately expressed in the propositions of Barclay. In truth it was rather the simple habits of the sect, their watchful discipline, and love of peace, to which he was attached, than to their heterodoxy. Substitute a little plain English for the cant phraseo logy and mystic jargon which he had partly invented, and partly borrowed from Jacob Behmen, and he might have almost passed, as to mere doctrine, for orthodox. He believed in the atonement of Christ-in his divinity, according to a peculiar notion of it-in the agency of the Holy Spirit-in the corruption of human nature. Will our readers bear with us while we touch for a moment on the ill defined and worse understood tenets of quakerism?

The fundamental principle of this system appears to be, that there is lodged within every nian that which is indiscriminately called the seed of God, the word of God, the spirit of God, the light of Christ, the hidden Christ, &c. &c. &c.—that upon the cultivation of this "seed," or attention to this "word,” &c. &c. depends the holiness and happiness of man, that to the man thus cultivating, attending, &c. &c. God gives larger portions of his Spirit, or reveals himself more fully to his soul. And such is the transcendent value attached to these communications of God to the soul, that " these revelations are not to be subjected to the examination of the Scriptures as to a touchstone"-that "the Scriptures are not to be considered as the principal ground of all truth and knowledge-nor the adequate primary rule of faith and manners"-that "all praises, prayers, and preachings which man can begin and end at his pleasure, do or leave undone as himself sees meet, are superstitious, will-worship, an abominable idolatry in the sight of God"that" silence is a principal part of God's worship"that is, the sitting "silent together, ceasing from all outwardsand feeling after the inward seed of life."--We state here but a few of the inferences from the cardinal principle. But these are enough to shew the spirit, the absurdity, and the danger of the system. The persuasion that the Scripture is not to be deemed the primary rule of faith and manners-that the supposed com

VOL. V. NO. IX.

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munications of the Spirit to every individual are not to be subordinated to the Bible, or to be corrected by it-is sufficient to expose the scheme to the strongest charge of enthusiasm.

We have hitherto canvassed the talents and virtues of William Penn without any reference to his quakerism. But, taking this into the account, we should presume to say, first, that, if he really embraced this faith, he could not be altogether a wise man; and, secondly, that if embracing it, he was yet sober and honest, he could not be a bad man. Now as he apparently both received the creed and illustrated it by a pure and correct life, we are disposed a little to compliment his heart at the expence of his understanding. All this we say very safely, now that he is gone where controversy never enters. But the bare retrospection of the mass of letter-press he would have heaped upon us had these free remarks escaped the eldest of our brotherhood in the year 1700, makes us tremble. We will say no more therefore on quakerism, except that one of our main objections to it is the palpable disingenuousness of some of its principal champions, and especially of Barclay. This writer professing to explain, as well as justify, the system, pursues a thoroughly unfair course. He is silent concerning those fundamental topics of Christianity, without knowing its opinions upon which quakerism cannot be estimated as a Christian system. He touches lightly upon those objectionable parts of the system which he was unable to conceal. He involves whatever is confessedly wrong in terms so obscure, as, whilst they save the doctrine, to defeat the enquirer.-The same plan, we are compelled to say, is, to a degree, pursued in those yearly minutes more recently given to the public.-We are, however, delighted to find in these minutes, that the necessities of successive ages have extorted from them what is, at once, a remedy for the evils and an avowal of the fallacy of their primary principle. This remedy indeed is as old as William Penn, but is now more completely organized and applied. Certain elders

are appointed in every meeting, a part of whose office it is to judge whether what others attribute to the movement of the Spirit, is in fact a movement from above or from below. This is vastly comfortable for their fellow citizens; for as these inspired persons will probably not surrender their fancies to the mere fancies of others, both parties may at last consent, which is all we desire, to try them by the Bible.-We trust that the freedom of these animadversions wil be pardoned. It is far from our disposition to insult the prejudices of any religious body; especially where that body connects with their opinions a practice so pure and benevolent as that of the great mass of the quakers. But the system has evidently out-lived its proper